News Section Columns

by Editor
November 4, 2013 at 9:36 am

http://www.smartertimes.com/1048/news-section-columns

One of the ways the Times displays its left-wing bias is in the news-section columns. It's one thing to have an op-ed page that tilts left. But in the New York Times, the Sunday metro section regularly carries a left-wing column by Ginia Bellafante and the Saturday business section regularly carries a left-wing column by James Stewart, with no right-wing or even center-right column to balance them out.

This past weekend was no exception. Mr. Stewart, who in his previous column proposed increased taxation without representation on "ultrawealthy nonresidents who own property in New York City," is at it again. This time around, he wants to raise taxes on what he calls "The fortunate 400 people with the highest adjusted gross incomes." Mr. Stewart writes:

The I.R.S. doesn't identify the members of the elite 400, but they surely include some top hedge fund managers. In 2009, the minimum income required to make the top 25 in the annual ranking of top-earning hedge fund managers by AR: Absolute Return+ Alpha magazine was $350 million. That suggests that all of them would have been among the top 400.

Among those at the top of the rankings that year were David Tepper, founder of Appaloosa Management, who earned an estimated $4 billion; George Soros, who earned $3.3 billion; James Simons of Renaissance Technologies, who made $2.5 billion; and John Paulson, at $2.3 billion, who famously bet against mortgage-backed securities and cashed in on the housing collapse.

The AR numbers appear to include the unrealized capital gains of the managers' own money in their funds. Since unrealized gains don't count toward the IRS definition of adjusted gross income, it's not clear that the changes he proposes, of increasing taxes on dividends and capital gains, would even have that great an effect. Warren Buffett, for example, who is not a hedge fund manager but who is one of the richest people in the country, wouldn't be materially affected.

No matter what one thinks of Mr. Stewart's argument, the fact is that two Saturdays in a row the Times business section has carried a column calling for tax increases. Where's the Times business section column calling for tax cuts?

Meanwhile, the Times Sunday metro section carries a column reporting that "The idea that a de Blasio administration would alienate the wealthy, that the wealthy would revolt against relatively slight tax increases and move to Miami, that they would endure any significant marginalization in the narrative of the city, seems to be losing its currency." The evidence for that is that rich people in the real estate industry are giving Mr. de Blasio money. Reports the Times:

"No sane person believes we are turning the clock back to the Dinkins days," Fred Peters, president of Warburg Realty, said.

The column doesn't seem to consider the possibility that these real estate people are giving money to Mr. de Blasio because they want their projects approved, rather than out of some kind of great optimism about or ideological sympathy with his policy proposals.

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